With the recent advances in small-incision cataract surgery, increased emphasis has been placed on developing soft, foldable materials suitable for use in artificial lenses. In general, these materials fall into one of three categories: hydrogels, silicones, and acrylics.
The refractive power of a lens is a function of its shape and the refractive index of the material of which it is made. A lens made from a material having a higher refractive index can be thinner and provide the same refractive power as a lens made from a material having a relatively lower refractive index.
In general hydrogel materials have a relatively low refractive index, making them less desirable than other materials because of the thicker lens optic necessary to achieve a given refractive power. Silicone materials generally have a higher refractive index than hydrogels, but tend to unfold explosively after being placed in the eye in a folded position. Explosive unfolding can potentially damage the corneal endothelium and/or rupture the natural lens capsule of the eye. Acrylic materials are desirable because they typically have a high refractive index and unfold more slowly or controllably than silicone materials.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,290,892 (Namdaran et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,331,073, (Weinschenk, III et al.), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,693,095 (Freeman et al.), the complete disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference, discuss forming foldable lenses out of a polymer material derived from an ethoxyaryl(meth)acrylate with a crosslinker or with a second acrylate monomer and a crosslinker. Since the polymer material is soft/foldable, these patents discuss mold forming the polymer material to individually form the lens which requires specialized equipment and expensive customized molds. In addition, the resulting molded lenses have poor surface quality since they cannot be polished. Alternatively, there is discussion in U.S. Pat. No. 5,331,073 of forming lenses from a soft/foldable material by machining it at cryogenic temperatures.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,668,446 (Kaplan et al.), the complete disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, alleviates the problems of mold forming the lenses and the process difficulties and expense associated with cryogenic machining of soft polymer materials by employing a process of forming a rigid polymer sheet that can be machined into lenses which are then esterified to render them foldable. The problem with this process is the polymers used to form the rigid polymer material have an inferior refractive index and it is essential in the esterification step to employ substantial processing equipment to remove water, including water formed by the esterification reaction. If virtually all the water is not removed, the resulting lenses tend to crumble or suffer from other mechanical infirmities. Moreover, these lenses tend to become opaque in aqueous environments.